Be Still, My Heart: Star Wars Celebration Recap

What’s the internal temperature of a Tauntaun? Luke-warm. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ladies and Jedis, it’s about time I broke my BGS vow of silence. Today, I bring to you a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. The Star Wars Celebration was in Anaheim, California this past weekend, and fans flocked from all over the world to attend this event. If I was not a poor college student, I would have been there in a heartbeat. Maybe I’ll be able to head over there next year with a media pass (hint, hint, LucasArts. I know you’re reading this). I digress. Keep in mind that these are most important to me, and it’s not 100% representative of the entire conference. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll be looking forward to the Star Wars future, and you’ll be able to turn to me and say, “Chewie…we’re home.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Obviously, the biggest topic of the weekend was the newest film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which is the seventh installment in the movie series. While I’ve single-handedly contributed to at least 1 million of the 88 million views in the first day, I realize that not everyone has the luxury of having as much free time as I, so you will find a trailer below to satiate your Kylo Ren fantasies.

Here’s what we know so far, thanks to panels this weekend:

We have a brand new planet.

The opening scene with a crashed destroyer (which looks oddly reminiscent of a scene from a beloved game) is NOT Tattooine. J.J. Abrams confirmed on the first day of the Celebration that we were on a completely new planet called Jakku. While we do not know anything about the planet apart from the trailer, we DO know that there is going to be a DLC mission available on EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront (November 2015) that will be made available to the public in early December, before the movie comes out. We’re sure to learn a bit about this in the game. We also know that a few of our protagonists are Jakku locals, which brings me to my next point.

We have five new characters confirmed.

Obviously, there will be a slew of new characters, but we have names for five new characters that I’m pretty stoked about. Three of the characters (Rey, Finn, and BB-8) all originate from the unknown planet Jakku. It was confirmed this weekend by Daisy Ridley that her character, Rey, is a self-sufficient scavenger on the planet, but she meets up with a character later on, whom we can presume to be Finn.

Now, Finn’s a tricky one. There’s a lot of conjecture concerning what his role plays in the universe. He has been officially been confirmed a Stormtrooper, as opposed to the idea that he was just pulling a Han/Luke with his Stormtrooper gig. But I’m under the impression that he’s actually a Jedi. In our lovely trailer above, we see Finn sporting a coat that, upon further inspection, appears to have lightsaber straps. My theory? He’s a Stormtrooper recruit who starts to notice a development of a new sense: THE FORCE. With this new found ability, he starts to sense a disturbance, and he leaves the Stormtrooper life.

BB-8 is simply the fun robot-ball we see in both trailers.

Poe Dameron is a fighter pilot for the Resistance. Oscar Isaac, the actor portraying him, said this weekend that “He is the best freaking pilot in the galaxy,” which, I assume, means that he’s going to be the new Han Solo of the film/series.

With the fall of the Emperor and the return of the Jedi to restore the order of the galaxy, the universe is all fine and dandy, now, right? Of course, that would make sense in some packaged fairy tale crap you’d get from a Divergent book, but we’re dealing with the complexity that is Star Wars. Simply put, cutting the head off the snake did not seem to end the Empire. Instead, the remaining forces of the Empire have formed the First Order. While we do not know a whole lot about the First Order, we do know that they have brought about several costume changes, hence the new Stormtrooper look and different colors on Star Destroyers in space.

Just as the Empire morphed into the First Order, the remaining forces of the Rebels changed names to the Resistance. There’s not a lot we know about the Resistance, except the fact that they must be doing well to have enough money and resources to upgrade their X-Wings from the T-65 class to the new-and-improved T-70 class, which Poe Dameron can be seen piloting. They still sport the old Rebel insignia, but we are unsure of much else concerning the Resistance.

That wraps up the majority of the info concerning The Force Awakens trailer and news, but we do have a few other things that have kept our ears low to the ground.

Rogue One

We were given new information concerning Rogue One, a spin-off film written by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones. There will be a number of spin-offs in the next several years that will go under the overarching title “Anthology.” Rogue One will be the first film in the Anthology series, and the franchise can take this in many different ways.

Towards the tail-end of the conference, the plot details were revealed as such:

Rogue One will take place right before Episode IV.

It will focus on a group of Rebel pilots whose job is to steal plans for the Death Star.

This is a time in which the grand majority of Jedi are thought to be extinct, so there will be little-to-no interaction of Jedis in the film.

Felicity Jones plays a rebel soldier, and we can assume she is a pilot, as well.

Star Wars: Battlefront

We’re looking at a November release date for this game. While there’s not been a whole lot to go on with this revel trailer, we do know a few things:

There will NOT be a campaign. Expect something very similar to how Titanfall works.

As mentioned before, there will be a mission titled “The Battle of Jakku” which will provide a bit of background concerning the unknown planet before the film launches in December.

There will be a book released that will deal with the issues in the game.

Space battles are NOT happening.

That wraps up my wrap-up of my favorite bits of information from this weekend. Stay on the lookout for anything else Star Wars related here!

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David Douglas is a Business Administration major at Georgia Tech. You could read Bennett’s bio and adjust it with descriptors like “tall,” and “hipster tendencies,” and it would be appropriate for David. In addition to sitting in his bed alone watching television, David also downloads and binge-plays any PS4 Beta he can get his dirty hands on. He then tweets about it while @’ing corporate accounts and using their hashtags.

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